Target for Terror
by L. A. Iding
Publication Date: February 1, 2014
Synopsis: "If you leave on your own, you’ll be dead by morning."
Critical Care Nurse Natalia Sokolova can’t ignore former FBI Agent Sloan Dryer’s dire warning. After the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia dies under her care, her house explodes in front of her eyes and now she’s found her best friends brutally murdered. Ironically, the only bright spot in this nightmare is Sloan’s bad Ukrainian accent and his willingness to protect her.
Sloan is convinced that someone wants to kill Natalia and when he finds a link to her family, he’s not sure who they can trust. As they run for their lives, and from the passion simmering between them, they uncover a terrorist plot that could bring the nation to its knees. Time is running out. Can Sloan and Natalia save their country and their future, before it’s too late?
Critical Care Nurse Natalia Sokolova can’t ignore former FBI Agent Sloan Dryer’s dire warning. After the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia dies under her care, her house explodes in front of her eyes and now she’s found her best friends brutally murdered. Ironically, the only bright spot in this nightmare is Sloan’s bad Ukrainian accent and his willingness to protect her.
Sloan is convinced that someone wants to kill Natalia and when he finds a link to her family, he’s not sure who they can trust. As they run for their lives, and from the passion simmering between them, they uncover a terrorist plot that could bring the nation to its knees. Time is running out. Can Sloan and Natalia save their country and their future, before it’s too late?
July 1st – 12:12 AM – Washington, DC
Natalia leaned back against the seat of the taxi, clutching what little money she had left. Calm. She needed to remain calm. The muscles in her legs quivered from exertion and her scrubs clung to her sweat-dampened skin. Several controlled, deep breaths helped to slow her racing heart.
She placed a hand over the pendant she wore around her neck, searching for strength. She’d been adopted when she was only four-years-old, and didn’t have any memories at all of her birth mother. Nothing except the pendant she wore around her neck. If she hadn’t been wearing it, the necklace would have been gone too, along with everything else she owned.
She spared another wistful thought for her precious things belonging to her mother. And all her research notes. Not that she’d been very close to finding her birth mother, but the clues she’d gathered in relation to her past had been blown to bits.
Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back determinedly. Enough. Crying was useless and wouldn’t change anything. She needed to count her blessings. Her cat, Petr was out of his arthritis-filled misery, and she could recreate her notes. Her memories of her dear adopted mother would remain alive in her heart. Her home could be replaced. Ivan would help her. He and his partner Andrew, would gladly allow her to stay with them until she could find something else.
The driver pulled up to Ivan’s house. Gratefully, she climbed from the taxi.
The townhouse Ivan shared with Andrew was dark. Natalia hesitated outside the dark doorway debating what to do. Now that she’d calmed down a bit, knocking on the door at one in the morning didn’t seem prudent, so she raised up on her tiptoes and helped herself to the spare key Ivan kept hidden along the inside edge of his fancy light fixture.
She quietly unlocked and opened the door, flipping on the hallway light as she stepped inside. Blinking, she gave her eyes a few minutes to adjust to the brightness. She headed down the short hallway.
Stopped.
Dark crimson smears stained lily-white walls and impeccable hardwood floors. The awful metallic stench grabbed her around the throat, pressing against her trachea. Blood? She stepped closer, unable to believe her senses.
Oh no. Please, God, no!
Ivan!
She fisted a hand in her mouth to keep from screaming. She knew she should run in case the attacker was still there, but she couldn’t leave. She had to find Ivan. She took one step, then another until she reached the kitchen.
And found them.
Two bodies lying face down on the kitchen floor, bathed in blood.
Ivan! Andrew. No! This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Deep, gasping sobs rose from her chest. Five years of ingrained critical care nursing broke through the panic enough to force her to approach, leaning over the bodies to check for a pulse, even though in some corner of her brain she knew the action was useless. Her fingers confirmed her brain’s suspicions. The pale skin was cold, lifeless. They were both dead.
Oh God. Her stomach heaved, rising into her throat in a bilious wave. Run. Belgi. Run! She spun from the horrific sight and ran. Out of the townhouse and down the steps. Tears blurred her vision and she ran face-first into a wall of solid male muscle.
The killer!
She fought against the arms that came round her, kicking and punching as her momentum carried them down onto the grassy embankment, landing hard enough to make her teeth rattle. He was too strong for her. His arms held hers easily in spite of her wild, thrashing attempts to get free. She opened her mouth to scream but a hard hand closed over her mouth as an even harder body pinned hers against the unyielding earth.
“Natalia, stop fighting. I’m here to help you.”
The words, spoken in Ukrainian, snaked through the waves of hysteria, making sense when nothing else would have. She stopped her fierce struggle and peered through the darkness at the man who held her firmly in his grasp.Her heart thudded against her chest when she recognized him as the tall, dark-haired man from the hospital. The knowledge he was one of the three government men who’d come to pry information from Josef Korolev was not reassuring.
“You promise not to scream?” he whispered in Ukrainian. She nodded, and then tried to turn her head away to free her mouth. He moved his hand, but kept her body pinned beneath him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a vicious whisper. “Da poshel ti! Did you hurt Ivan? And Andrew? Are you going to kill me, too?”
Natalia didn’t know what to expect, but braced herself for the worst. Instead, he rose to his feet in a quick movement, dragging her upright too.
“No, I don’t want to kill you. But someone else sure as hell does. If you want to stay alive, you’d better come with me.” He tugged on her hand.
She dug in her heels and wrenched out of his grip. No way in hell was she going with him. Not when there had already been too much death and destruction for her shell-shocked mind to handle. “I don’t think so. I’m going to the police.” Where she should have gone right away. Stupid. She’d been so stupid.
“If you leave on your own, you’ll be dead by morning.”
About L. A. Iding
L. A. Iding is a critical care nurse by day and an author by night. After writing medical romances, winning the Desert Rose Golden Quill Award and the Heart Of Denver Aspen Gold Award, she's decided to follow her dream to write longer more complex romantic suspense stories. She is currently hard at work on the sequel of this book, Target For Ransom.
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